Land Tenure

Before the 1952 Revolution, Bolivia's land distribution was the worst
in Latin America; some 4 percent of all landowners possessed more than
82 percent of the land. A major success of the land reform program was
the redistribution of nearly 50 percent of peasant lands within its
first two years. Although greatly improved from the prerevolutionary
period, broad disparities in land tenure remained in the 1980s. Analysts
estimated that over 90 percent of the farms in the highlands and valleys
remained under twenty hectares in the 1980s. These farms typically were
one to three hectares in size and were worked by nearly 80 percent of
Bolivia's more than 700,000 farmers. The majority of farmers in the
highlands were also members of agricultural cooperatives. Only 40
percent of the farms in the eastern and northern lowlands were under
twenty hectares; the most common size in that region was fifty to
seventy-five hectares, but subsistence farming existed as well.

Nearly 60 percent of all farmers lived in the highlands in the late
1980s. Highland parcels were the smallest in the country, had the least
fertile soils, and had been worked for the longest period of time.
Highland farmers received under 40 percent of all rural income, although
they represented about 60 percent of the rural population.

Twenty percent of the country's farmers were located in the
relatively fertile valleys. These farmers fared much better than their
Altiplano counterparts on the high plateau (Altiplano) between the two
mountain ranges in western Bolivia. Plots averaged between five and ten
hectares, and because of the more fertile and less exhausted soils, a
larger share of that land was in use compared with the Altiplano.
Farmers in the valleys were frequently able to harvest two crops
annually, as opposed to the one crop a year on the Altiplano.

The largest farms were found on the sprawling and often isolated
eastern lowlands, where about 20 percent of the country's farmers worked
65 percent of the country's land. The lowlands produced the bulk of all
agricultural output and virtually all of the sector's exports. Although
about 16 percent of the lowland farms were of subsistence size (five
hectares or fewer), the great majority of the region's land was owned by
medium-to-large landowners actively engaged in commercial agriculture.
The power center of the agricultural sector was located in the
southeastern department of Santa Cruz, where landholdings often exceeded
5,000 hectares.